Studies in English Language
This is fundamentally a course about language attitudes. People talk about speaking and writing English “correctly,” but — with regard to a language — what is “correct”?
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Discovering Literature - Environmental Literature
How do literature, art, and media contribute to how we think about the environment?
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What happens to painting in the hands of great writers? We’ll look at painters and painting as they are depicted in prose and poetry, and explore the intersection of literature and visual art.
Learn more about this courseTopics in English and American Literature and Culture - The Book Lab
This is a class on book design, from chapbooks to chapter books; miniature books to giant books; picture books to comic books.
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This is a course on American superhero comics, their history and what they mean as an aspect of US culture.
Learn more about this courseIntroduction to Ethnic American Literature
We will examine writers from an array of ethnic traditions, including, African, Asian, and Anglo American, Latinx, and American Indian, whose work collectively paints an inclusive and fully realized picture of American life in the late 20th and 21st centuries.
Learn more about this courseIntroduction to World Literature
This course introduces students to the diversity and richness of African literature from Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and the U.S.
Learn more about this courseLiterature and Public Life (ASURE)
The proliferation of disinformation and hate divides communities and threatens democratic institutions. We'll study how these are weaponized for profit and political gain against any group designated as “other,” from George Floyd to the victims of covid-19.
Learn more about this courseLiterary Interpretation and Critical Perspectives
What makes a text “literary”? What does it mean to study literature critically? This class will introduce strategies of analysis that help us unlock how the texts we read achieve their effects.
Learn more about this courseIntroduction to Advanced Study of Literature
According to Descartes, to wonder is to look closely and intensely at something new, and then to ask questions that put the novel object into conversation with what you already know. We will do precisely that, examining poems, plays, novels, and nonfiction ranging from Descartes to the 17th-century astronomical poet Hester Pulter, and from Shakespeare to 21st-century poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Learn more about this courseAmerican Film Culture
Over the past century science fiction films have evolved into a uniquely expressive genre of narrative cinema. We will define science fiction film as a genre, explore the story-telling potentials of special effects and their meaning, and investigate the impact of futurist or exotic design on narrative.
Learn more about this courseLiterary History 1
We will consider what aspect of ourselves get represented in the excluded monster, and why.
Learn more about this courseLiterary History 2
A survey of British and American literature written (roughly) between the years 1700 and 1900. Our goal will be to consider the ways in which diverse writers used literature to represent, shape, and sometimes resist their rapidly changing worlds.
Learn more about this courseLate Plays of Shakespeare
We will study plays that address issues of hospitality and hostility through the complex interplay of language, staging, and characters caught in extreme circumstances that reflects some of the issues we confront today.
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By reading Milton’s poetry and prose, you’ll discover how his poetry shaped our sense of what great literature is.
Learn more about this courseTwentieth-Century British Fiction
By the end of the semester, you’ll have a map of the period that touches upon its history, philosophy, and aesthetics.
Learn more about this courseNineteenth-Century British Fiction
This class examines classic Victorian fiction alongside contemporary retellings in order to ask what characterizes “the Victorian” and modern interpretations of it.
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Our area of study is the mid- to late 19th-century U.S., a period that saw a remarkable proliferation of movements for social reform. We'll read fiction about these movements, and consider to what extent the literary work approximates a political argument, or whether its literary elements enhance, get in the way of, complicate, or even subvert its social intent.
Learn more about this courseAmerican Prose (Excluding Fiction)
We will treat this explosion of the person-made-public as a call to reflection as we explore both how selves are created in language and why these selves are created as they are.
Learn more about this courseCritical Practices
This course will be organized around a set of critical approaches that have become salient in the last 40 years, including deconstruction/post-structuralism, feminism and gender studies, Marxism, and post-colonial studies among other approaches.
Learn more about this courseCritical Practices
In this course we will explore how critics take up, expand, contest, and revise each other's ideas.
Learn more about this courseFeminist Literary and Cultural Criticism
In this course, we will read a range of feminist writings about pregnancy, childbirth, abortion, and parenting from the fields of philosophy, political science, science and technology studies, queer and trans theory, and feminist literary and cultural theory.
Learn more about this courseBritish and American Film Studies
We’ll use our topic, masculinity and the nation, to work through a range of genres including the epic, the thriller, historical drama, and social realism.
Learn more about this courseSeminar: Literary Form, Mode, and Theme
Study of texts written in several historical periods united by a common mode or form (narrative, romanticism, lyric, etc.), or by a common theme (Bildungsroman, the city and the country, the two cultures question, the uses of literacy, etc.).
Learn more about this courseSeminar: Literary Form, Mode, and Theme
This course surveys a wide range of writing about climate change, with a particular focus on the significance of literary form and genre for conceiving the crisis.
Learn more about this courseHonors Public Speaking
This course prepares students in the liberal arts to communicate effectively with public audiences.
Learn more about this courseRhetoric and Sports
We'll consider the diverse cultural environments in which athletes emerge (including the effects of race and class), the role of social media and self-branding, and the rhetorical situations, ecologies, homologies, and practices that determine them.
Learn more about this courseFeminist Rhetoric and Public Issues
Explore how various kinds of feminist rhetoric address key public issues. Feminist rhetorical strategies are influenced by different traditions and assumptions about how change happens.
Learn more about this courseArgumentation and Public Advocacy
You will have the chance to study the art of persuasion and develop your own sense of how you would like to use argumentation as a citizen concerned about the common good.
Learn more about this courseAdvocacy and Debate
Over the course of the semester, students will read foundational theories of the role of debate in democratic societies and engage in multiple competitive debates against other classmates.
Learn more about this courseRhetorical Criticism
R305 focuses on the application of a variety of critical approaches to a range of communicative texts.
Learn more about this courseEnvironmental Communication
This course explores the myriad of ways public communication shapes our understanding of nature and the environment.
Learn more about this courseCulture, Identity, and Rhetoric of Place
R398 explores the persuasive dimensions of places and spaces people build and that simultaneously shape those people.
Learn more about this courseIntroductory Creative Writing
We will focus on the basic elements of writing fiction, non-fiction/memoir, and poetry through guided practice, readings, lectures, and workshop discussions.
Learn more about this courseCommunity Service Writing
Students volunteer at a community service agency, write an assignment for public use by the agency, and perform coursework culminating in a research paper on related social issue.
Learn more about this courseWriting Fiction
Write your heart out in this course focused on fiction writing. By writing, reading and critiquing, you will develop your fiction and understand more deeply how various aspects of the story come together to give it organic unity.
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We will analyze poetry by breaking it down into basic elements—like music, the line, imagery, and figurative language—and examining the ways these elements work together to create an effective whole.
Learn more about this courseAdvanced Technical Writing
This class equips you with the visual ability and analytical vocabulary you will need to compete at the highest level.
Learn more about this courseAdvanced Expository Writing
This course will take up questions of rhetoric, play, and games including theories of play, gaming communities, and games designed to make critical or cultural commentary.
Learn more about this courseThe Craft of Fiction
We will cover components of fiction—structure, characterization, plot, description, dialogue, point of view, voice, setting, and revision—by examining published works and writing assignments that focus your attention on elements of craft.
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This is a fiction workshop, but we will be using every opportunity to interrogate the workshop model and bend it to our will.
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In this class, we will build upon students’ previous coursework in the genre by reading, analyzing, and discussing different types of creative nonfiction, including the personal essay, braided essays, nature/travel/food writing, prescriptive nonfiction (self-help), and hybrid/hermit-crab essays, to name a few.
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The College of Arts